Perhaps, somewhere, some day, at a less miserable time, we may see each other again.

There is nothing dictators hate so much as that unassailable, eternally elusive, eternally provoking gleam. One of the main reasons why the very gallant Russian poet Gumilev was put to death by Lenin's ruffians thirty odd years ago was that during the whole ordeal, in the prosecutor's dim office, in the torture house, in the winding corridors that led to the truck, in the truck that took him to the place of execution, and at that place itself, full of the shuffling feet of the clumsy and gloomy shooting squad, the poet kept smiling.

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul.

Between the wolf in the tall grass and the wolf in the tall story there is a shimmering go-between. That go-between, that prism, is the art of literature.

Our best yesterdays are now foul piles of crumpled names.

Thus, in pornographic novels, action has to be limited to the copulation of clichés.

Knowing you have something good to read before bed is among the most pleasurable of sensations.